Cookware transforms raw foodstuffs into cooked dishes, signaling the transformation of nature, clay or iron, to culture as a vessel or tool. As such these vessels can be seen to have had power or agency, best epitomized in Western epistemes via Hamlet’s three witches’ chant, “Double double toil and trouble…Fire burn and cauldron bubble,” or in the tools and vessels used in African Diaspora religions, the conjure pots: including ìgbá/assentos/ fundamentos, nganga/prenda, and the opon Ifá and iroke Ifá, (the Babalawo’s divination tray and wand). Yet, in everyday usage, the intrinsic value of culinary or tabletop vessels is based on form and function located in their utility, craft, or aesthetics and not ritual power. Customarily we critique their beauty and functionality, not their role as visual/cultural texts. This talk interrogates the semiotics of material cultural artifacts imbued in several 19th century English and Low Country vessels created by makers such as Josiah Wedgwood, Enoch Wood, and enslaved David Drake, that have a tacit racialized agency, linguistic messaging, or symbolic signs above and beyond their utilitarian functionality. Consider that a “sign” is something that stands for something else, just as seeing smoke alerts us that fire is or was present. The creation of “transferware” fostered the production and circulation of affordable ceramics sometimes enhanced with texts. Unpacking this explicit messaging included in everyday culinary material objects may refer to both explicit/implicit paradigms in need of alteration or evisceration.

Length: 30 minutes

I present here preliminary genetic data obtained from a subset of the individuals unearthed from St. Mary’s Chapel cemetery on the former Hagley Plantation, near Georgetown, SC. The work builds on the osteological assessment, reassociation, and bone functional adaptation analysis carried out by Dr. William Stevens (2016). In bioarchaeology, genetic data supplements osteological analysis in a number of ways. It can help to determine an individual’s sex, ancestral origins, and degree of relatedness to other individuals in the population. In some instances, it can help to identify living descendents and aid in the proper repatriation of unidentified human remains. The goal of this genetic analysis is to fill in as many of these gaps as we can. In this talk, I present results from the ongoing research and continue the community conversations begun at the Reinterment ceremony in May 2021.

Length: 15 minutes

Both the Planter and the Clotilda are historically significant sites, either eligible or listed on the National Register. Both provide robust examples for a lively discussion of community archaeology, control, and benefit regarding historic preservation and conservation. The Planter and Clotilda are solid exemplars of Black maritime history. This panel would look at how the National Register designation has involved or not involved stakeholders in Africatown and Robert Smalls’ legacy, and present models on how citizen-science and community archaeology can play valuable roles for private and government projects.

Length: 45 minutes

In this presentation, we present a study on whether public and private WAI in South Carolina, USA is equitably distributed with respect to race and income. Using publicly available data from state agencies and the US Census Bureau, we mapped the distribution of these structures across the 301 km of the South Carolina coast. We found that areas with lower income are more likely to contain a public pier or boat landing, but racial composition has no effect. On the other hand, private docks showed the opposite trends, as the abundance of docks is significantly, positively correlated with areas that have greater percentages of White residents, while income has no effect. We contend that the racially unequal distribution of docks is likely a consequence of the legacy of Black and Gullah/Geechee land loss, especially of waterfront property, throughout the coastal southeast over the past half-century. Knowledge of racially uneven private water access can guide public policy to rectify this imbalance.

Length: 30 minutes

The Gullah Geechee Chamber of Commerce, alongside the WeGoja Foundation, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, Gullah/Geechee Nation, and Coastal Carolina University are working on the development of a Gullah Geechee Seafood Trail that focuses on the maritime heritage and foodways. Hemingway will discuss how this effort ensures that Gullah Geechee communities profit from their heritage, and how the initiative plans to pair economic opportunities with historic preservation.

Length: 15 minutes

Funded by the Broadening Narratives initiative from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, The Plantersville Cultural Collective is the second phase of work on digitizing and contextualizing records and artifacts from the Plantersville and surrounding region as part of the Gullah Geechee Digital Project (below). The Joyner Institute at CCU is serving as the hub organization alongside the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, which just purchased the site of Hasty Point Plantation, and the Village Group’s Plantersville Cultural Center, which just received recognition from the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission. The grant will fund a community coordinator that will spearhead community outreach and oral history documentation, as well as the Mandala Firm’s research on possible interpretive models for the Hasty Point property, setting the stage to transform the Scenic Byway of Plantersville into an interpretive space that focuses on Gullah Geechee culture via a virtual tour and micro-interpretive sites.

Length: 75 minutes

Stretching nearly 500 miles along the coast of Florida to North Carolina, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor footprint was established in 2006 by Congress as a National Historic Area so that members of the public would be encouraged to explore its culturally historic sites and celebrate the story of the Gullah Geechee people. This corridor allows local communities to preserve, protect and celebrate the Gullah Geechee heritage in a wide variety of ways. The presentation will highlight the efforts of the Brunswick County NAACP to establish a North Carolina Gullah Geechee Greenway/Blueway Heritage Trail along the west side of the Cape Fear River. Beginning in February 2020, this effort has been gaining support from local governments, private foundations, and local citizens. The new greenway/blueway footprint is roughly 30 miles long and reaches from Navassa to Southport. This preservation, protection and celebration our historical, cultural, and natural resources are foundational to the Brunswick community’s “sense of place.”

Length: 45 minutes

This presentation will also discuss methodologies that open up creative spaces for catharsis, reconciliation, healing, and transnational solidarity towards informing transitional justice policies, and community development programs for African descendants in the Americas.

Length: 60 minutes

My discussion will focus on the recent publication (Kendall Hunt, 2021) Black Freedom Struggles: Africana Reader which is a testament to Black excellence throughout the Africana world. The focus of Black Freedom Struggles is not to dwell on the oppression of Black people. The purpose is to show Black agency and teach common struggle. The Africana world witnessed some of the best leadership often developed at the community level. The development of Black Freedom Struggles incorporates the “Horne’s Thesis” named after Gerald Horne a prolific African diaspora scholar who methodology and scholarship challenge scholars to expand the capacity of their historiography to account for the complexity, magnitude, range, and tenacity of Black identity, cultural formation, and political engagement. Concepts such as African diaspora, transAfricanism, the Black Atlantic, and Pan-Africanism, will help students learn and explore strategies to learn about Africa and the African diaspora. This will allow students to understand how the concepts used in the reader are pertinent to historical study, examining Africa, and the diaspora current relationship to the global Black world. I will discuss Section I: Origins of Black Freedom Struggles which focuses on all Black settlements as communities of cultural enclaves, self-preservation, heritage, freedom, and culture. I will compare and contrast Black settlements in relationship to the Gullah Geechee Corridor and the African Diaspora.

Length: 60 minutes